Hanging out with the Stones
Mark Greaves on Shine A Light
11 April 2008

Buddy Guy, left, and The Rolling Stones

So, the legendary director Martin Scorsese has made a film about the legendary rock band the Rolling Stones. It's a Big Moment: film and music historians will no doubt be sharpening their pencils in anticipation.

But actually what is most striking about the project is its lack of ambition. Scorsese didn't want to make a definitive documentary about the history of the band - he said that it would take too long. To produce anything vaguely comprehensive would take years, he said, and evidently he didn't want to bother.

Instead Shine A Light is largely composed of footage from one single Rolling Stones gig. The concept originally came from Mick Jagger, who wanted Scorsese to record "the biggest concert ever" with one million people squashed together on a beach in Brazil. The idea is pretty hubristic and Scorsese managed to persuade him that it would make for a terrible film. The venue was moved to the Beacon Theatre in New York, which is small and intimate but has enough room for all the required machinery. Technicians were able to instal 18 cameras which, like the tentacles of some vast mechanical octopus, could swoop and zoom and circle around the stage.

For Scorsese the only important thing was capturing the magic of the performance. He said: "It's fascinating to see that kind of power and excitement that transcends... ancient, shamanistic - they cast a spell." The trouble is, for anyone who is not a dedicated admirer of the band, that ancient shamanism is a little hard to detect. It is not really Scorsese's fault. His record of the concert is brilliant: the footage is saturated gloriously in light and colour and adds a richness and detail and splendour to their performance which even the disinterested viewer can enjoy. And the Rolling Stones themselves are incredible. Mick Jagger shakes and thrusts and jigs his limbs in the weirdest of ways as if his brain has abdicated responsibility for the actions of his body and left the spirit of rock 'n' roll to take charge directly.

The rest of the band are lovely to watch, too. Their joy at being on stage is so obvious and sincere that seeing them perform is like hanging out with friends who really like each other's company. And that, I suppose, is the point: Scorsese has managed to fake an intimacy between this group of friends and the viewer.

But despite all this I found myself drifting off and looking forward to the wittily selected bits of archive footage in between the songs. In the first clip, for instance, we see a remarkably smooth-skinned Mick Jagger predict that after two years of making records the Rolling Stones were likely carry on - for another year.

Another clip is taken from the BBC's World in Action in the 1970s. It shows Jagger getting out of a helicopter - he has come directly from prison after a drugs charge - to discuss the notion of freedom in society alongside Jesuit Fr Thomas Corbishley and an Anglican bishop, who are all waiting in a garden.

The main theme of the footage, though, is the tedium of interviews. We see grasping journalists ask the same questions again and again - and watch as the band give ever more boorish answers. The most fascinating moment is when the band say hello to Bill and Hillary Clinton. The concert at Beacon Theatre is supposed to raise money for Bill Clinton's foundation and as a birthday present he is introducing the band on-stage. After weirdly enthusiastic greetings - and hugs - the group settles into an awkward silence. Then a former president of Poland appears at the side and shakes hands with them all as if he were just another grateful fan. There is a slightly satirical edge to the scene: the Rolling Stones hold such a prominent place in pop culture that rulers of nations fall over themselves to meet them.

It's not surprising to discover that Bill Clinton is actually younger than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But then, they do hide their age well: Jagger, who turns 65 this year, has the energy of an athlete. It's only the skin - leathery, sagging and kind of incredible - that gives the game away. There is, however, one endearing moment when Charlie Watts, the drummer, turns to the camera and blows out his cheeks wearily and confidingly at the effort of it all.

In the end the Rolling Stones are upstaged by someone even older than them. Buddy Guy, 71 - whom I had never heard of but who is apparently a blues legend - is there to show the sexagenarian upstarts how it's done. On stage he almost seems to be bursting with glee. There is one shot where he fixes his eyes calmly on the camera and does not look away: somehow, oddly, it manages to be a still, beautiful moment, lifted out of the rest of the film.